The first U.S. indigenous video-game company explains how their game Never Alone crosses cultural boundaries

Can games be used to pass wisdom from one generation to the other? Can video games be used to explore, share and extend cultures, specifically cultures that are misrepresented or underrepresented in media today? Can games be used to engage people worldwide who have an interest in people with different worldviews, different systems to their values?

These were Upper One Games CEO Gloria O’Neill’s questions to the team from E-Line media, who would end up working on Kisima Inŋitchuŋa (Iñupiaq for Never Alone). The first U.S.-based indigenous video game company has been working with their partners at E-Line Media to put together an unprecedented gaming experience, following Nuna and her arctic fox companion in the upcoming Arctic puzzle-adventure. Creative director Sean Vesce and art director Dima Veryovka of E-Line, who’ve worked on titles like Tomb Raider and the SOCOM series, and Cook Inlet Tribal Council cultural ambassador Amy Fredeen discuss the challenges and beauty that comes from working across cultural borders to tell a story together.

Post Arcade: Amy, what’s your role as cultural ambassador for the Cook Inlet Tribal Council look like, specifically working with Upper One Games and E-Line?

Amy Freedeen: My role is particularly one that make connections. Even though I am Iñupiaq, and this video game is based on a tradition Iñupiaq story called “Kunuuksaayuka,” the idea was not to have one person represent the values and the communities the Iñupiaq people. As we develop the game we seek out the right people to invite to the table.

One of the first things we did was have E-Line come up and meet with our partners and storytellers, a group of youth and a group of elders, so that they had the initial exposure, right away at the beginning of the project, to the people we knew we needed to have their voices at the table. Once that group of individuals worked with E-Line and really came up with the concept to really focus the game on the Arctic area and the Iñupiaq people, from there we sought out the culture bearers, the ambassadors, experts that we needed to stay involved throughout the process.

It’s been a phenomenal journey. We had to learn how to make video games, just as E-Line was learning about Iñupiaq culture, and we had to temper our expectations in that this wasn’t going to be a verbatim depiction of a traditional story in a video game because it doesn’t work exactly to translate it word-for-word or action-for-action. It’s really an exciting new type of storytelling for us.

PA: Sean, what does your job as creative director on Never Alone look like?

Sean Vesce: We’re a small shop and we wear a lot of hats. First and foremost my role has been to have a cohesive vision for the project, and to make sure we understood all of the interests and creative recognition for all of our stakeholders, and then combine that with what we know about good gameplay, and good player experience. I helped to shape and design, I helped come up with the original content. I hired the team and we built the studio here in Seattle specifically for this project.

PA: Dima, what kind of work goes into the art director role?

Dima Veryovka: As art director I’m operating the flow, directing our team, pretty much overall creating everything that you see on the screen; mood, feel, light. Plus, working with the artists, writers and modelers, making sure we’re all on the same page, trying to to direct and clarify exactly what we’re doing.

PA: I think the arctic fox has a potential to be one gaming’s cutest and best characters. What can you tell me about Never Alone’s characters, Nuna and the arctic fox?

SV: One of the big questions we had early on in the project was around the theme of the game. As we learned more about Iñupiaq culture and their values, one of the things we learned, first and foremost, is the importance of interdependence and the idea that survival requires people to rely on one another. This is especially true in the environment. Over time, the notion of an individual hero is really what we’re used to in western fiction.

We wanted to have two main characters that each had a respective skill set, advantages and disadvantages, and they needed to work together to overcome obstacles and challenges. We thought that’s a really fitting way to honour that theme.

The idea of having an Iñupiaq girl as a main character was a hotly debated topic. Openly and collectively we ended up with the Iñupiaq girl over a male character, primarily because we felt the girl hero has been underrepresented in video games and to have a girl character that was powerful and could overcome something as harsh as that environment was something that we felt would add to the canon of games. Many of us actually have daughters, so the idea of creating something that would inspire them, for us on the development side, was important.

We wanted to balance that with a male character in the arctic fox. In the traditional fiction we learned a lot about notions of shape-shifting or animal characters who take on many different forms, and humans relying on animals, and having different relationships with them. So the idea that this uncommon companionship could form, and that the two of them would meet to work with the other would be great. We went through numerous iterations of what kind of animal that companion could be. Everything from a wolf, to an ermine, an owl…

DV: And a dog.

SV: And a dog, like a pack dog. The fox had this curious aesthetic, in that it was small, wily. Foxes are very cunning, they’re very resilient. As Dima started sketching out the different characters and different iterations, at least for us once we had those two in place it was magic, and we just kept going with that.

PA: Who’s voice was that, that we heard in the trailer?

SV: We’re really blessed to have a collection of people from the community we’ve been working with on the project. Everything from Iñupiaq elders, hunters, storytellers, youth. In that particular trailer, it’s a gentleman who we’ve been working with named Ron Brower Senior who is a really dynamic and amazing guy. Grew up outside of Barrow in a traditional sod house prior to the time when the government forced everyone from the outlying villages with children to live in the central location, which at that time was Barrow, Alaska, just a bunch of people, but out there that was a major hub.

Ron has seen the progression all the way from that lifestyle to modern times, so he’s just this amazing guy who’s got an incredible perspective. He was a whaling captain at one point, he’s an artist, he’s a teacher. He just finished his own Masters degree, he started in the 80’s, I think, so after a long period of time and research. He was down a couple of weeks ago for a visit and he recorded that, and it was great.

PA: Maybe Amy can speak to what kind of characters and stories Never Alone draws on?

AF: In a lot of traditional Native Alaskan stories there’s a lot of common themes. There are spirit helpers that can take the form of animals, or shape-shifters, or even just elders, or disguise themselves as family members. Really what we looked at is how you can use gameplay in a meaningful way to show that. There’s some really great characters in this game that you can meet and explore with.

A lot of the other common elements in Alaskan Native — in particular Iñupiaq — stories is there are these people called “little people,” they’re probably about the size from your elbow to the tip of your finger, but they have superhuman strength, and they can be helpful or standoffish, and in other areas of Alaska they can be a little more mischievous. You’ll see some little characters pop in and out.

It’s really amazing to see the underlying story, which is “Kunuuksaayuka,” really provide the spine of the video game. What it is, is this amazing story that was originally handed down by this elder named Robert Cleveland, whose Iñupiaq name is Nasruk. We actually worked with his daughter, because he passed away some time ago, to be able to use this story in the most respectful way.

PA: What’s the dynamic like between Upper One Games, and the community there to help tell their stories, with E-Line?

AF: I’ll start off and say that, being Iñupiaq I was really nervous to see my culture portrayed in a video game, but after we saw the initial concept art from Dima, and after speaking with Sean about the original concept I just knew we were doing the right thing. I have to say that E-Line as our partners have taken great care in the crucial development process we’ve been working on very seriously, and I would really love to hear them talk about their experience coming up to Alaska and working with us, and some of the tension points we had balancing realism in portraying the stories in game development.

SV: Sometimes I tell people we’re accidental ethnographers. As video game developers it’s very uncommon for us to work outside of our insular group. Normally the conversation is more among game developers. The idea of getting out into the community was really inspiring to us. Very new. What we learned right from the outset was that in order to earn the right to do this type of work we had to build trust, and that trust was hard fought. For us it was about that we were students, first and foremost, of the culture. That we were there to learn and listen, and try to synthesize that intelligence into something that makes sense and resonated with the community.

It was a lot of initial conversation where we listened and then shared a lot about the work we do and the industry so it was a two-way conversation. One thing that came out of the original conversations, right from the start, was a cautionary tale of people who have come before, not making games, but other kind of media that have tried to appropriate elements for professional gain. If we thought the community was just going to be an advisory or a rubber stamp, that we were going to be in for a real failure. The only way to do this properly is to have folks in the community have a seat at the table and be a part of the process and decision making, right from the outset. From those early conversations we immediately pivoted and started digging in, in that way. That’s really one of the reasons I think we’re able to achieve what we’re achieving is because we’ve had that all along.

PA: Dima, what kind of art and artists have you been drawing on?

DV: Yes, well it’s not from specific artists. Overall Inuit or Iñupiaq, because they have such different and very unique styles, that could compete with any other culture like Egypt or Greece. It’s really beautiful, very simple, like for example when they wrote on the bones and scrim they capture and keep the organic shape that’s actually beautiful and at the same time they reveal it by carving something special. I was inspired by how they do that and I was trying to do the same thing in the game.

For the game we were trying to build we very carefully looked at every scrim and every piece that ‘s there. It goes through a lot of filtering. When I’m directing I’m trying to make sure we don’t have anything on the screen that’s not adding to the art, adding to the style.

How we worked together on the art is, in Barrow, I learned, when we went there two weeks ago, I met an actual artist and showed them the game and the graphics that I drew. They were very interested in how close the style that I developed on my own by looking at the art, they feel like, wow, that’s very good, and I was very pleased to hear that.

SV: This is actually our second trip to Barrow, we went about in February of last year, was our first time up. We met with artists who were doing scrimshaw and Dima was really inspired by the bone carvings. There isn’t a lot of written record. Iñupiaq mythology was transmitted orally, primarily passed down through story-time. They did have this one type of art that recorded stories, scrimshaws, the bone carving. Dima was immediately drawn to that and used that method to tell some of the meta-components of the story. Dima and the team brought that to life, it actually starts at a carving that comes to life, almost, like a comic sequence. That was a great example of really being inspired by something traditional and using that style and altering it a little bit to bring it into a modern context.

DV: It’s a very unique way of telling stories. So that’s how we wanted to tell the story and really capture that, and do that in the game, too.

AF: I just want to say how much I’ve appreciated working with E-Line, and they were just talking about the scrimshaw and how it was used traditionally to tell stories. These are pieces that families created about something they experienced, or about a story they heard. Honestly, I haven’t seen that type of artwork down in modern times. There’s still really beautiful scrimshaw but it is lacking the multiple panels and storytelling component. It’s usually static, one picture that’s beautifully done, but they’ve moved towards what the market wants to buy which is the one beautiful picture.

Really, what they’ve done, is brought traditional artwork back to life, literally on screen. It brought tears to my eyes the first time I saw it. Again, I just want to thank them.